International Raids Target Sites Selling Contraband on the ‘Dark Web’

In the digital marketplace, they operated as a secret underground with names like Blue Sky and Silk Road 2.0 where anonymous buyers could purchase drugs, stolen credit cards and weapons, or even hire a hit man.

These websites, known as the “dark web,” cannot be found by Google or even by typing in a web address. The sites typically operated on the Tor network, which is designed to conceal the I.P. addresses of the computers being used.

It was that thriving online black market that American and international authorities announced on Friday had been the target of a series of raids and arrests in 16 countries, which included the seizure of dozens of websites that matched anonymous sellers and buyers for illicit goods and services.

The investigation, nicknamed Operation Onymous, was aimed chiefly at sellers, and deactivated upward of 50 such websites, including Silk Road 2.0 and Blue Sky, as well as Mr. Quid’s Forum and Cannabis Road Markets, according to Europol, the European Union’s law enforcement agency.

Across Europe and the United States, at least 17 sellers were arrested, and law enforcement authorities seized Bitcoins valued at $1 million, along with gold, cash and drugs, according to Troels Oerting, who heads Europol’s cybercrime center. The investigation had been underway for months as the illegal online market “mushroomed,” Mr. Oerting said.

The international effort was “the largest law enforcement action to date against criminal websites operating on the Tor network,” said Preet Bharara, the United States attorney in Manhattan, whose office announced the operation on Friday. “As illegal activity online becomes more prevalent,” he added, “criminals can no longer expect that they can hide in the shadows of the ‘dark web.’ ”

On Thursday, Mr. Bharara’s office announced charges against a California man, Blake Benthall, 26, who was arrested the previous day in San Francisco and charged with narcotics trafficking, money laundering and hacking conspiracies in connection with his operation of Silk Road 2.0. That site, the authorities said, was the successor to the original Silk Road website and identical in operation.

As recently as Oct. 29, Silk Road 2.0 was “dominated by offerings for illegal narcotics,” with 14,024 listings for “Drugs,” including 1,654 for “Psychedelics” and 1,921 for “Ecstasy,” according to a federal complaint. The website recently had about 150,000 monthly active users, generating at least $8 million in monthly sales and $400,000 in monthly commissions, the authorities said.

The operation was led by American law enforcement agencies — the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Homeland Security Investigations — and coordinated by Europol in the various European countries. The raids started on Wednesday, with Mr. Benthall’s arrest, and continued through Friday in a broad sweep.

Raids took place across Europe, including France, Germany, Spain, Britain and Ireland. Mr. Bharara’s office cited the cooperation of those countries, as well as Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Finland, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Romania, Sweden and Switzerland.

Mr. Oerting declined to say how the authorities had cracked the dark websites despite the sites’ use of anonymous software. But the investigation appears to have been full of intrigue.

An undercover Homeland Security agent “successfully infiltrated the support staff involved in running” Silk Road 2.0, was provided access to its private areas and “regularly interacted directly” with Mr. Benthall, who used the screen name Defcon, according to the complaint, which was filed in federal court in Manhattan.

The agent even became a paid staff member of Silk Road 2.0, and since January received regular payments in Bitcoins totaling about $32,000, according to the complaint.

The Tor browser, originally developed by the United States Naval Research Laboratory, is an open source project that permits people to use the Internet without revealing their location. It is used not only for criminal activities but by whistle-blowers and activists seeking to avoid detection.

Users of Tor, an acronym for the onion router for its layers of encryption, need special software.

Mr. Bharara’s office said Friday that the broad operation against the “dark market” sites involved the seizure of more than 400 Tor web addresses and the servers hosting them. The targeted websites included some designed to mimic conventional online retail giants, even down to offering a system to review and rate the quality of service.

“The business model is to create web stores on these hidden services and then use the normal transport to deliver it,” Mr. Oerting said.

Among the sites seized was one called “Executive Outcomes,” which specialized in the trafficking of firearms, including assault rifles, automatic weapons and sound suppressors, Mr. Bharara’s office said.

The office said that the site offered “secure drop ship locations” globally to ensure anonymity during the shipping process. Another website, “Fake Real Plastic,” offered counterfeit credit cards for sale, “printed to look just like real Visa and MasterCards,” according to Mr. Bharara’s office. The site guaranteed that its cards would have at least $2,500 left on the credit card limit and could be produced with “any name you want on the card,” the government said.

Other sites had offered to sell counterfeit euros and dollars in exchange for Bitcoins, prosecutors said.

“The scope is basically everything is for sale, everything that is stolen,” Mr. Oerting said. “You might even buy a stolen car. But in general they were selling anything you would want to send with a normal mailman, the fastest business mode,” he said.

Benjamin Weiser reported from New York, and Doreen Carvajal from Paris.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A4 of the New York edition with the headline: International Raids Target Sites Selling Contraband on the ‘Dark Web’. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe